Congratulations to Sean Hartfield, who won this month’s Mini Sledgehammer, with prompts inspired by the big solar eclipse!

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Prompts:
Character: A new girlfriend
Location: A doghouse
Prop/object: Special eclipse-viewing glasses
Phrase: “It is what it is.”

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Untitled

by Sean Hartfield

Well, I guess I can finally get rid of the doghouse. It had been sitting in the back yard since I bought the house almost a year ago. I was thinking of getting a dog or a fish anyway, and the sellers offered to leave it, so I said “sure.” I paid sixty thousand more than the house was worth anyway, so fuck yea, leave the doghouse.

I wanted to get a pure-bred chocolate lab, but my ex-girlfriend wanted a pound dog from the Humane Society, so right there we should have known we weren’t made for each other. But like most other people who are too lonely and horny to end a relationship despite the warning signs, we wanted to try to make it work.

We failed, and I still don’t have a dog.

But I do have my new girlfriend Catherine, the dog walker. Actually, she owns a dog walking/sitting business and kinda doesn’t like it when I introduce her as a dog walker. She’s entering med-school in the fall, so I asked if I should say she’s a vet. She said I should introduce her as “Catherine” and leave it at that.

Anyway, I met her because she was dropping off the neighbor’s dog when I saw her about to climb into her van. I’m horrible at flirting and picking up women so I reached out to shake her hand before my palms got too sweaty and tried to get my lie out before it got too complicated. The lie, I mean. The trick, I’m told, is to keep a lie as simple as possible.

Anyway, I told Catherine I was going to be traveling soon and wanted to know how much she charged for dog sitting. “What kind of dog do you have?,” she asked.

Hmph.

I hadn’t really thought my lie through that far. I was just gonna say I had a dog and that I was in a hurry and could I call her to talk more about, you know, dog sitting. For when I’m traveling.

“Maybe you can help me pick one out,” I said.

“Huh?,” she said, tilting her head slightly to one side, sorta like a confused puppy.

“I don’t have a dog yet,” I confessed as her brows joined in a frown. “But I’m really gonna, well, I want to get a dog soon, and then I saw your van and then I saw you and then I wanted to talk to you and as you can probably tell, I’m really bad at this.

“Fascinating,” she said. “A guy who lies. Are you at least really good in bed?”

Speechless, I actually felt my face flush.

After a few seconds passed, she made one of those game show loser buzzer sounds. Annnnkkkk!!! “Time’s up.”

Then we both laughed so hard we ended up sitting in the grass and talking about random stuff and the upcoming solar eclipse. Later, she said she decided to go out with me despite the lie because I was able to laugh at myself. She said she had no intentions whatsoever of ever sleeping with me though.

Where was I? Oh yea, so we went out a few times and went on a trip to celebrate us both getting our houses ready for the renters during the solar eclipse, glasses included, of course.

Who knows where life will take us. She’s rocking my world in and out of the bedroom, and from what I can tell she has been delightfully surprised at my skills. Low expectations, right? They say life is what you make of it, but ya know, it is what it is.